In its way, this is as good as Enemy at the Gates, and I know there is criticism of that film in Russia, but it still helps people in the West understand the heroism and contribution of the peoples of the former Soviet Union in our Allied Victory over Nazism.
It is far better than the film Stalingrad which seems all too sympathetic to the Germans.
I design military history boardgames - wargames - and most of them are about the Russian Front in World War 2 ... the Great Patriotic War, as it is known to the Russians (and Belorussians and ....) (Most of my games are free to print off and play, on my webpages.) There are wargamers in Volgograd/Stalingrad, and one of them has told me that the 6 year old little brother of his grandmother was taken away by the Germans to be drained of his blood for transfusions - murdered - something I had once thought was exaggeration and/or propaganda. As Omer Bartov has described, even the non-SS German Army was a pack of monsters, in the East.
The film is unsparing in portraying the hopelessness but heroism of the initially unprepared Brest Fortress garrison. And I hadn't realized their families had been murdered by the Nazis a couple years after they had been allowed to come out and surrender.
I was astonished by the accurate German Mark III panzers/tanks. (Were these actual reconstructions?) I was surprised and impressed that the Jewish commissar Fomin was portrayed so positively, as antagonistic as Israel and its supporters have been toward the Russians and Belorussians.
Everyone in the West should see this film to better understand what the Russians, Poles, and other Eastern peoples went through, during World War 2. The world is a much better place, when we are working with the peoples of the East as former allies and friends, instead of against them.
Lou Coatney
It is far better than the film Stalingrad which seems all too sympathetic to the Germans.
I design military history boardgames - wargames - and most of them are about the Russian Front in World War 2 ... the Great Patriotic War, as it is known to the Russians (and Belorussians and ....) (Most of my games are free to print off and play, on my webpages.) There are wargamers in Volgograd/Stalingrad, and one of them has told me that the 6 year old little brother of his grandmother was taken away by the Germans to be drained of his blood for transfusions - murdered - something I had once thought was exaggeration and/or propaganda. As Omer Bartov has described, even the non-SS German Army was a pack of monsters, in the East.
The film is unsparing in portraying the hopelessness but heroism of the initially unprepared Brest Fortress garrison. And I hadn't realized their families had been murdered by the Nazis a couple years after they had been allowed to come out and surrender.
I was astonished by the accurate German Mark III panzers/tanks. (Were these actual reconstructions?) I was surprised and impressed that the Jewish commissar Fomin was portrayed so positively, as antagonistic as Israel and its supporters have been toward the Russians and Belorussians.
Everyone in the West should see this film to better understand what the Russians, Poles, and other Eastern peoples went through, during World War 2. The world is a much better place, when we are working with the peoples of the East as former allies and friends, instead of against them.
Lou Coatney
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